Manulife Continues Exploration of AI in Innovation Lab

Manulife’s Lab of Forward Thinking is partnering with indico data solutions, a Boston-based company specializing in deep Learning, to better analyze unstructured financial data, the insurer announced today.

Indico’s platform will enable the Canadian insurer to evaluate data from news articles and analyst reports and recommend investment decisions to portfolio managers. Deciphering natural language and extracting insights is one of indico’s platform’s core strengths, according to the companies.

“Indico will help us accelerate our use of deep learning to improve the decision-making capabilities of our analysts, portfolio managers and researchers,” said Greg Framke, executive vice president and chief information officer, Manulife, in a statement. “By introducing new capabilities that we know will add to our user experience and overall impact, we will improve the customer experience.”

Manulife LOFT’s announcement follows its recent disclosure of a partnership with Nervana Systems earlier this month. The collaborations are part of a strategic effort by the insurance giant to accelerate its adoption of new technologies, including, AI, blockchain and virtual reality, it said.